Abby Phillip doesn’t run from a challenge. She is a Black woman who graduated from Harvard University with a degree in government. She holds down a demanding career as an anchor on NewsNight with Abby Phillip on CNN where she has interviewed a plethora of cultural icons from hip-hop star Cam’ron to groundbreaking journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones to the next mayor of New York City, Zohran Mamdani. Her impressive career also includes roles at ABC NEWS and The Washington Post as a political reporter. She is a dedicated wife and a mother. She has a dog named Booker T. The latter might not necessarily be a challenge, but it speaks to her gangster.
One of Phillip’s latest challenges was penning A Dream Deferred: Jesse Jackson and The Fight for Black Political Power. The title is of course a nod to the famous Langston Hughes poem, and like all Hughes prose, this book has an abundance of depth. Phillip’s literary debut is a critical look into the life of Jackson, from his earlier days during the Civil Rights Movement under the wing of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., to historic runs for President in the 1980s to his family life in Chicago and even his complicated relationship with former President Barack Obama.
We caught up with the 37-year-old Maryland native about A Dream Deferred but also managed to have her spill the tea on the last book she read (it was published before she was born), her favorite songs of the moment and why women are her favorite interview subjects.
ESSENCE: Congratulations on the success of your book, A Dream Deferred! The timing seems intentional considering our political climate.
ABBY PHILLIP: When I started working on this book, it was a little over four years ago, and it was a different time, but in a sense it was part of this moment that we’ve been in as a country for a long time now. Black voters are a powerful part of the electoral system and use their voices in a way that strongly influences the Democratic party. Jesse Jackson’s political story and philosophy have a lot to teach us about what can be possible, about how we can go beyond empowering Black voters to use their right to vote and have influence. How do we have a political system that unites this country as opposed to dividing it?
ESSENCE: Right.
PHILLIP: And then you have someone like Zohran Mamdani winning in New York City. It begs a lot of new questions about what politics can look like in the future if the Democratic Party in particular starts to address the real core economic needs of its voters and figures out a way to do that while not alienating voters of color who are important and such a powerful part of their constituency. So, this is a book about the past, but it’s also a book about the future and where we’re headed.
ESSENCE: What prepared you to write this book?
PHILLIP: I started covering politics when Barack Obama was President in his first term. That was my first job. I was 21 years-old. I was writing for my college newspaper and then after graduating I covered him in the White House. It was always a kind of exercise in putting Obama in a historical context for this nation, not just as the first Black President, but also as somebody who comes out of a tradition of Black political leaders, of people who kind of have their roots in the sort of rhetoric and the speaking style of the church, frankly, that Obama learned from. From the very beginning of my career, I’ve been kind of covering these same themes.
ESSENCE: You covered Jackson’s influence on Obama extensively in the book.
PHILLIP: Without someone like Jesse Jackson, Obama would’ve had a very different story in some obvious ways because Jesse Jackson did run for President first, but also in some less obvious ways. When Obama was coming up in politics, he was learning from Jesse Jackson. He was showing up at the Rainbow Push Coalition in Chicago and sitting there in the pews and speaking before the Rainbow Push Coalition audience. Obama operates in a tradition Black public figures like Dr. King who learn how to tie the country together with sort of broad themes of shared values, of moral values of the fact that at the end of the day, the country has to reach its full potential only when everybody has the same rights.
ESSENCE: Your book contains awesome archival imagery.
PHILLIP: I curated the photos myself. I was trying to reveal moments in time that a lot of people would not have remembered. There are photos of him during the New York primary where he’s surrounded by large crowds in the Bronx and in Harlem. That imagery of just how famous he was at that time and how popular he was in these communities was part of what I was trying to do.
There are photos of him in Cuba bringing home prisoners of war with Fidel Castro. There’s a photo of him with Donald Trump and Don King kind of alluding to the relationship that they had with each other at that time because they were kind of running in some of the same circles and photos of him with Shirley Chisholm who ran for president in 1972. There’s one where he’s in the home of a White family. He used to do these things where he would spend the night in people’s homes while traveling on the campaign trail. He might spend the night in the home of White family in Iowa and then wake up and have breakfast with them at the [kitchen] table. Those scenes of a Black candidate in the home of a White family was something that had never been done.
ESSENCE: Rev. Jackson has appeared in some of the most memorable images of the last century like the one of him crying on election night during Obama’s 2008 win and then of course on the balcony after Dr. King’s assassination.
PHILLIP: The tears [on election night in 2008]. Yeah, it’s an iconic image. And he’s not backstage or anything. He’s in the crowd, just like a regular person. But he’s crying. I think that image is sort of steered into so many people’s minds, and a lot of people wonder, what are those tears about? And the book tries to answer that because it’s complicated. The tears were complex. They were pride, true joy and happiness, and maybe a little bit of bittersweet emotions because he sought that office and never made it. And I would argue that Jesse Jackson was just yards away from Dr. King when he was assassinated.
Part of Jesse Jackson’s life is about his survival. For so much of his life, he and his family didn’t fully expect him to make it to the 84 years old that he is today because so many Black men who have been prominently involved in activism and civil rights and politics have been killed. So, his story is one of survival and what it looks like for a civil rights leader to make it to his eighties. Regardless of what you think about Jesse Jackson, he is a consequential figure who lived an incredibly varied life.
RAPID FIRE QUESTIONS WITH ABBY PHILLIP
Top 3 songs on my playlist: 1. Folded by Kehlani 2. Have You Ever? By Brandy 3. American Requiem by Beyoncé
Pizza or burgers: burgers
Heels or sneakers: heels
Favorite vacay spot: Paris
Favorite podcasts: Aspire by Emma Grede
Last book you read: Creative Visualization by Shakti Gawain
Favorite show to binge watch: Game of Thrones
Your parents are from Trinidad. Have you ever “played mas” at Carnival? I haven’t but I definitely want to!
Favorite interview subjects: Powerful women. Because we have so much to learn from each other. And women have an incredible ability to make something out of nothing and craft extraordinary, multi-faceted lives.